ABSTRACT
We begin with a scene to frame our discussion of youth and culture: A gangsta rapper from northern Finland dresses up like his New York kinsman but draws his lyrics from his own cultural sphere. His interpretation scheme resembles that of his role model on the other side of the Atlantic but he uses a very different knowledge reserve as his raw material. Certainly, the northern Finnish rapper's knowledge reserve has “shifted” in a global direction through the impact of the virtual world and has led to a new socialization influenced by information technology. His context, the physical surroundings, is given and different from that of the streets of New York. The Finnish rapper represents, in all likelihood, the middle class of the Nordic welfare state and his ethnic origin is that of the majority of the population.
